Overview

President’s Welcome

Welcome to Commonwealth Corporation! Originally established in 1981 as the Bay State Skills Corporation, Commonwealth Corporation is Massachusetts’ public-private corporation focused on narrowing the skills gap and enhancing our state’s workforce, businesses, youth and young adults, and economy.

With a $55 million budget and offices across the state, Commonwealth Corporation works with hundreds of Massachusetts companies, thousands of new and experienced workers, and tens of thousands of youth and young adults each year. Among our activities, we:

Administer the Workforce Training Fund, a trust that awards $20 million in grants to companies annually;

Commonwealth Corporation’s goal is to extend Massachusetts’ leadership in education and training, and its overall prosperity, by ensuring that all people benefit from our economy. I invite you to peruse our website to learn more.

Sincerely,
Dr. J.D. LaRock
President and CEO

Governor’s Commission on Digital Innovation and LifeLong Learning

Governor Charlie Baker has designated Commonwealth Corporation to organize and lead his new Commission on Digital Innovation and Lifelong Learning. Launching in April 2018 and working through the fall, the Commission will examine the implications of accelerating technology on the nature of work, the future of jobs in Massachusetts, and what effective postsecondary education and training looks like in the 21st century. The Commission will recommend new, digitally-enabled steps to dramatically increase the availability of affordable, flexible, employer-relevant learning for Massachusetts residents throughout their lives.

The Commission is comprised of executives from some of Massachusetts’ largest companies, college and university presidents, community and workforce system leaders, innovators in digital learning, and leading scholars of learning science, organizations, and the future of education and work. It is supported by a project team at Commonwealth Corporation and a team affiliated with Harvard Business School and its Forum for Growth and Innovation.

Careers

At Commonwealth Corporation we come prepared every day to support workers and businesses across the Commonwealth. We value accountability, impact, learning & personal growth, partnership, respect, social justice & equity, teamwork, and work-life balance. Are these values important to you? You might be the right fit for our team.

Financial Statements

Senior Leadership Team

Click the orange circle for biographies.

Dr. J.D. LaRock, President and CEO

Dr. J.D. LaRock is President and CEO of Commonwealth Corporation. Previously, he was a member of Northeastern University’s senior leadership team, where he served as chief of staff to the university’s president, among other executive roles. A scholar of education policy, higher education, and the future of work, J.D. is Professor of the Practice of Law and Policy at Northeastern and a Fellow with the Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities program.

Prior to his academic and university management career, J.D. was an education policymaker at the federal, state, and international levels. As senior education advisor to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy, he helped lead the 2008 reauthorization of the federal Higher Education Act and the 2007 passage of the College Cost Reduction and Access Act, which provided $20 billion in financial aid to U.S. college students.

As education policy director for the Governor of Massachusetts, J.D. helped author the Achievement Gap Act of 2010, a landmark K-12 education reform law, as well as Massachusetts’ successful application to President Obama’s “Race to the Top” competition, which secured $250 million for the state. He is the co-editor of Special Education for a New Century (Harvard Education Press, 2005), editor of the OECD publication Education at a Glance (2012), and contributed to the book Robot Proof: Higher Education in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, 2017).

J.D. is a member of the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education and Chair of the Board of Trustees at North Shore Community College. He holds three degrees from Harvard, including a doctorate in education administration, policy, and social planning, and a law degree from Georgetown.

Rebekah Lashman, Senior Vice President, Sector Strategies

Rebekah is Senior Vice President of the Commonwealth Corporation. She leads the Corporation’s applied research, evaluation and regional and sector strategies teams, building upward mobility pathways in partnership with regional and state partners to prepare Massachusetts residents for the Commonwealth’s critical vacancies. Previously, Rebekah served as Manager of Workforce Partnerships for the Boston Private Industry Council, as a national workforce development consultant at Jobs for the Future and as a program development specialist for Massachusetts’ Department of Employment and Training. Rebekah received her MBA from Simmons College Graduate School of Management.

Susan Lange, Vice President, Youth Pathways

Susan serves as the Vice President of the Youth Pathways division at Commonwealth Corporation. Susan has spent the last eight years advancing the state’s youth employment and career pathways programs, which provide thousands of young people with academic, life, and career skills that expand and enhance their educational and career options.

Prior to her work at CommCorp, Susan led Youth Opportunity (YO) Boston (now Youth Options Unlimited) for more than 10 years, a national demonstration project and workforce development program for adjudicated youth. While there, she developed YO’s Transitional Employment Program which was recognized as a Best Practices model by the US Department of Labor.

She holds a Master’s degree in Education from UMass Boston and a Bachelor’s degree from Dickinson College.

Hans Van Der Lee, Vice President of Finance and CFO

Hans joined Commonwealth Corporation in 1995 as a financial analyst and was promoted to Vice President for Finance and Administration in 2003. He is responsible for all aspects of the financial and information technology infrastructure at Commonwealth Corporation; critical functions include maintaining the financial integrity of the corporation, the financial support of all programs through fund accounting and ensuring the effectiveness and integrity of the local area IT network.

Originally a native of the Netherlands but residing in the United States since 1971, Hans developed extensive experience as a cost accountant in manufacturing and in financial and logistical manufacturing management. Some of the basic principles utilized in this process, such as budgeting, cost management, and variance accounting, have been successfully applied to Commonwealth Corporation to facilitate fiscal management and reporting. Hans has lived and worked in several European countries; he was educated in the arts and business and as such brings a diverse cultural background, which helps to address corporate challenges.

Chris Shipps, Director of Human Resources

Chris is the Director of Human Resources at Commonwealth Corporation. Chris began his human resources career in 2001 at the MA Department of Mental Health with the Workers’ Compensation Litigation Unit. Since 2003, Chris held increasingly responsible managerial positions within the MA Executive Office of Health and Human Services (EHS) including: Workers’ Compensation Manager with oversight responsibility for three EHS agencies; Diversity Officer for the Department of Veterans’ Services, the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home and the Holyoke Soldiers’ Home; and served as Human Resources Manager at the Massachusetts Hospital School. Chris received his Master’s Degree in Public Administration from Suffolk University.